My two cents of info as mildly informed. I am a volunteer ff/emt.
My department is very well funded compared to the rest of our county. Compared to cities, it is laughably underfunded. We are 90 percent volunteer. We have zero paramedics, only EMTs (about 4).
An Engine not only has to run but has to pump. An engine may drive 3 miles but then run for 20 hours without moving but pumping water the entire time (using the transmission to do so). If the pump is not up to standards, FFs do not enter a building. No water, no entry. If the pump isn't compliant then it is not longer an "engine". Mileage is irrelevant. A low mileage engine (10k) might have a million other problems after 100k hours. Who fixes that in a volunteer department?
Ambulances are the same. The drive may be short but the engine never stops idling or charging the equipment on board. In the city the answer is always transport. If you have 1 ambulance and 6 hours round trip, you may stay on scene for a while to avoid a transport (assuming you don't risk the patient's life).
Most volunteer departments have 1-2 engines, and those are aging. If an engine goes out of service without a replacement, we stop responding.
This is not a city/rural problem. If you have ever taken a road trip, gone camping, visited relatives in "the country", then then you are relying on, and praying they have the equipment and staff to respond. Go outside the city for a rafting trip- swiftwater, rope rescue, EMS, traffic... all in the hands of volunteers with no resources.
Back to the article- we have one engine out of service. We can't buy 20x our tax revenue. Yes, everything has gone up in price. When EMS and Fire becomes unpurchaseable, there are (dire) consequences.
Thanks for the first hand feedback. It is helpful. When I read your post carefully ("laughably underfunded. We are 90 percent volunteer. We have zero paramedics"; "Who fixes that in a volunteer department?"), the first thing that crossed my mind is your tax revenue is just too low. You cannot have nice things with low taxes.
Another way to think about it: Are other highly developed nations seeing the same "crisis(es)" that you mention? (Think G-7 and close friends.) Hint: They do not.
We're definitely not undertaxed. A big problem is wholesale public corruption. We now pay inflated salaries for current public workers and for extremely-high retirement plans for past workers which was promised decades ago but not funded.
All this means we get taxed a lot more for ever fewer workers.
And this only scratches the surface. NFPA demanding all breakers be arc fault (add $1k+ to every home build), Seattle permitting being years backlog, governments don't have workers which know how things should be built so our construction costs are 10x other developed countries. We're living off legacy and have an ever-dropping standard of living.
it's usually both. things are not cost-effective, too many things happen at muni/county level, but of course at higher levels there's a huge backlog (due to lack of competence, due to low spend), plus the US is huge and sparse.
the "developed world" has a lot of problems with high costs (Baumol effect, extremely high standards, etc) and also the problem of low scale. China was able to roll out thousands of miles of high-speed rail at a very low relative cost, because of scale, a bit lower quality and lower standards (human rights, eminent domain, worker safety)
for example when it comes to policing the US pays comparatively less (given the rate of crime it has) even though it pays more than many other OECD countries
> Ambulances are the same. The drive may be short but the engine never stops idling or charging the equipment on board.
How much power are we talking about? 10-20 years ago, sure, using the engine and alternator for power made sense. Nowadays a hybrid has a several-kWh battery and plenty of power, along with an engine and generator optimized for much better charging performance. A PHEV is even better.
I wonder why there don’t seem to be PHEV van platforms. If someone made something like a Transit or Sprinter with a 50-100 kWh battery, an engine, and an option for a serious 120/240V system so that monstrous 12V wiring could be avoided, it seems that much nicer, more efficient and longer lasting ambulances could be built, not to mention camper vans and such.
This is exactly it. I'm also a volunteer for a small town, in a department that is decently funded. We have had the same two engines since 2009. We just (within the last month) received a new engine. It became extremely difficult to provide the level of service the community expects, and come up with money for a new engine. It's a major struggle.
Also something most folks don't know: about 70% of the firefighters in the US are volunteers. If you're in a big city you'll have 4 paid folks on an engine (maybe 3 and 1 intern) but as soon as you venture out of the city you'll see more engines 100% staffed by volunteers. And if you don't know the difference that's a good thing!
Fire departments run on budgets that would also shock you (how low they are).
The issue is that you're expecting trucks to go out in conditions like https://youtube.com/watch?v=7IFEiwNMrZ8, particularly if your volunteer brigade operates in a rural area, and they therefore have to keep crews alive in those conditions. This puts a minimum cost on each one.
Yeah, the minimum cost isn't $2M, but it's probably pretty close to $400k a truck. Then you add on urban rescue equipment if you're not in a rural area and things start to get very expensive.
Put a pump on a trailer. The problem with this country is we're not allowed to have "decent"; we are only allowed to buy the "best" and so we just hobble along with old shit while everything's breaking down and we're paying too much for the things we do buy.
In Australia that's either an ultralight tanker, which would cost around $100k USD today but with far lower 550L capacity and a lower throughput pump than a heavy tanker, or it's a command vehicle, and its modern equivalent would cost about $60k USD but have no pump or water tank. The ultralight tankers are mostly used for getting to fires faster when they're small, dealing with inaccessible terrain, or just being an extra vehicle during blacking out etc.
The problem you're always going to run into is that your truck needs to haul around 10 tonnes of water and protect its crew. You can stick a pump on the back of a hardened ute, but then you need to leave and find water 20x more frequently plus your pump is a dinky little water pistol, or you can drive a commercial water tanker into a bushfire, but then your driver needs to be unusually brave and no longer have much to live for.
I accept that firefighters are getting ripped off, but it feels like maybe 5% to 20% of the cost could be reduced, and then you're still dealing with unaffordable equipment.
Most fire engines in the US don't carry significant water, they're "pumper trucks" for boosting pressure from fire hydrants. 80% of US citizens live in urban areas with access to hydrants. They also carry lots of other gear too: https://rosenbaueramerica.com/fire-trucks/pumpers/
But you can do everything those do with an E-series cutaway ($200k fully outfitted?) and a pump pulled on a trailer. For a whole lot less than $2M.
Here in rural Western Australia there's a range of official vehicles, the local (wheatbelt area) farmers have supplemented them recently with an ex military unimog purchased at auction and fitted with an 8 (ish) tonne water tank (with anti slosh baffles) and extra cab insulation.
Not sure where specifically they sourced it, one of the military surplus auction houses like:
My department is very well funded compared to the rest of our county. Compared to cities, it is laughably underfunded. We are 90 percent volunteer. We have zero paramedics, only EMTs (about 4).
An Engine not only has to run but has to pump. An engine may drive 3 miles but then run for 20 hours without moving but pumping water the entire time (using the transmission to do so). If the pump is not up to standards, FFs do not enter a building. No water, no entry. If the pump isn't compliant then it is not longer an "engine". Mileage is irrelevant. A low mileage engine (10k) might have a million other problems after 100k hours. Who fixes that in a volunteer department?
Ambulances are the same. The drive may be short but the engine never stops idling or charging the equipment on board. In the city the answer is always transport. If you have 1 ambulance and 6 hours round trip, you may stay on scene for a while to avoid a transport (assuming you don't risk the patient's life).
Most volunteer departments have 1-2 engines, and those are aging. If an engine goes out of service without a replacement, we stop responding.
This is not a city/rural problem. If you have ever taken a road trip, gone camping, visited relatives in "the country", then then you are relying on, and praying they have the equipment and staff to respond. Go outside the city for a rafting trip- swiftwater, rope rescue, EMS, traffic... all in the hands of volunteers with no resources.
Back to the article- we have one engine out of service. We can't buy 20x our tax revenue. Yes, everything has gone up in price. When EMS and Fire becomes unpurchaseable, there are (dire) consequences.